Dazzling on Duolingo

I discovered Duolingo a few years ago and started dabbling in French on it. But it wasn’t until the lockdown that I pursued it seriously.

It has now been more than two years that I have consistently been learning on Duolingo, and loving it so far!

I’ll be honest – I approached the app with a healthy dose of scepticism. Could an app really gamify the learning of languages? How would I understand French or any other language if I knew nothing about it? Also didn’t French have gendered nouns?

All my worries were unfounded. The app teaches you so well that even the shortest intervals of learning like 5-10 minutes a day can improve your skills in your chosen language.

And don’t get me started on how cute the green owl mascot is! He’s called Duo, and he’s pretty much my favourite learning buddy!

So how does the app work? It begins with teaching you a few small words at a time and then tests you on them. With every lesson completed you earn XP, which is like learning points. You can set a goal of the amount of XP you intend to complete everyday and it can be as small as 10 or 20 XP. As your expertise grows so do the lessons. Gradually you move from a few small words to bigger phrases and sentences.

In addition, you can even read small two-minute stories that help you improve your vocabulary and your pronunciation. The app has recently introduced audio lessons as well, where you can listen along and perfect your pronunciation skills.

A number of ongoing challenges and tournaments keep you on your toes! This time I took it as a challenge to participate in and win a tournament. Check out the proof of my win:

Like with all learners interested in words, Duolingo maintains a great blog too. I’ve linked to it before as I come across useful articles on there all the time. You can read more here.

If you are on Duolingo already, feel free to connect with me!

Please note – this is not a paid post in any way! I am simply sharing my love for the No. 1 language learning app in the world.

Let me know if you have any such favourite apps for learning!